The present invention relates to component enclosures, and more particularly to a terminal enclosure for housing telephone components or the like.
In the telecommunications industry, in order to provide telephone service to a customer, or plurality of customers at a location, a building entrance terminal is generally installed having cable pairs which extend into the enclosure to carry the telephone wiring into the building. The building entrance terminal is generally mounted on a wall either within the building itself, or on an exterior wall where it is susceptible to the environment. Often, it becomes necessary to remove the terminal enclosure which has become damaged through aging or accident, and to replace it with a new enclosure to preserve the integrity of the connections within the enclosure.
In the prior art building entrance terminals, a new enclosure could be installed only by removing the plurality of wires from the connectors within the terminal enclosure, removing the cables from the enclosure, inserting the cables into the new enclosure and reconnecting the plurality of wires within the new enclosure. As one would conclude, this process takes a significant length of time, depending on the total number of cable pairs installed within the building entrance terminal and, during the entire procedure, every telephone line passing through the building entrance terminal is out of service. This presents a severe a problem for high usage telephone lines as well as an inconvenience for the normal telephone user.
It is therefore the object of the present invention to provide a terminal enclosure for telephone components or the like which allows the installer to remove a terminal enclosure and replace it with a new one without a major disruption of telephone service.
Another object of the invention is to provide a terminal enclosure of the type described in which entire cables may be removed and replaced without a major disruption of the telephone service.
Yet another object of the invention is to provide a terminal enclosure of the type described wherein the mounting panel employed to support the terminals for the cable connections is readily removable and interchangeable with other equipment panels.
Still another object of the invention is to provide a terminal enclosure for telephone components which is adaptable for mounting in a plurality of locations and particularly adaptable for both indoor and outdoor use.